You’re seventeen and on the bus on your way home from school. Maybe if you’d been a teenager twenty years ago, you’d have read a book or
You’re twenty two and you don’t see women like you on television ads, or on billboards or walking in fashion week. Sure, some models look unique and some actually have different sized measurements than the high-fashion norm, but for the most part, you feel like you’re lacking whatever it is that makes those women wow.
Dove never wants another girl to feel that way again.
In 2004, Dove released a unique and refreshing campaign: Campaign for Real Beauty. While we can now recognise how much times have changed since the ad first launched, for its time it was bold. It told women and girls that they needn’t compare themselves to others; that their beauty was still beautiful, even if it looked different. With a rapidly changing media landscape, the company decided they needed to revisit the iconic ad and refresh it to reflect the challenges that women face in 2024.
Through a worldwide analysis of how the beauty business affects women and girls, Dove sought to understand the current climate of this tumultuous industry, one that is increasingly impacted by technology and social media.
In a world of artificial intelligence and digital content that’s expanding each and every day, it’s no wonder that we can’t escape the trillions of content available every time you glance at a screen. By 2025, it’s expected that 90% of online content will be AI generated, posing an issue for representation, diversity and inclusivity in advertisements and social media. And even though 78% of Australian women and 68% of girls acknowledge the presence of artificially generated content online, 1 in 2 would still feel pressure to look like the ‘woman’ in the ad. Wanting to look like a woman who doesn’t exist is surely a red flag – especially when considering how increasingly younger kids are getting their hands on social media. Changing the narrative now attempts to delay the onslaught of negative content from reaching impressionable young girls.
Not only young girls are affected by AI generated beauty content. Women of all ages feel its effects.
4 in 5 Aussie women have been exposed to harmful beauty content online. This presents a big issue. It highlights that Australian girls and women not only feel the presence of AI in their lives, but they also compare themselves to an artificially created standard of beauty. Sadly, Dove found through their 2024 study, “The Real State of Beauty: A Global Report“, that over 44% of women would sacrifice a year of their lives to achieve peak beauty. When beauty standards are now being defined by images created by computers, statistics and prompts, who gets to say what beauty is, and why should women feel pressured to adhere to an artificial standard?
Dove released their pioneering ad, ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ 20 years ago. At the time, only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful. This figure was alarming then, and it still is now, especially when ‘beautiful’ is becoming a computer-generated ideal, rather than a reflection of how real women look.
To maintain their decades-long promise of showcasing real female beauty, Dove is launching their new campaign ‘The Code’, with a pledge to never use AI to represent real women in any of their advertisements. By encouraging other businesses to do the same, Dove aims to champion genuine representations of women worldwide. The company created Real Beauty Prompt Guidelines, a knowledge pack to inform everyone on how to create images which reflect real women with the most popular current AI programs. According to Marketing Manager for Dove, Tess Giordimaina, it is Dove’s ‘’mission to uplift women and girls everywhere and ensure they see their true selves reflected in the media.’’
By showcasing real women, Dove is setting the standard that real beauty is about real people. The most beautiful person you can be, according to Dove, is yourself.
Learn more about Dove’s 2024 Real Beauty campaign below.
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